CAN you believe that artificial contraception has now emerged a a key issue in American politics. Not abortion. Contraception for God’s sake.

It happened his way. Thousands of non-Catholics work for Catholic institutions like hospitals and colleges. The Obama administration says those non-Catholics should have access in their healh care packages to free contraception. Note that in this system no Catholic woman who does not want to practise birth control is forced to do so. So where is the assault on conscience and on religious liberty?

Further, wider access to birth control will reduce the number of abortions. That should make the bishops happy.

Should birth control be a private matter or a public matter to be argued on the hustings?

Stephen Harper wants Canada to be seen as the West’s leading benefactor to, and champion of women and children in the developing world. A the same time Harper rules out any third-world help for abortions. Yet a new survey, just out, shows that the absence of reproductive health services, including abortion, leads to death, serious medical problems and a frightening number of orphaned children. In the absence of reliable contraception and safe abortions, tens of thousand of women in the developing world die every year trying to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

In Africa and Latin America up to 97 per cent of abortions are unsafe. In 2008, 47,000 women died as a result of unsafe abortions and another 8.5 million had serious medical complications.

Th e Harper government chooses to ignore this reality.

Instead of refusing to fund projects that would allow abortion, should not Canada refuse to fund projects that don’t allow it?

Outlawing of abortions does not stop the practise, it just makes it more dangerous.

A Brazilian girl who is now nine has been sexually assaulted since she was six years old by her stepfather.

After the girl, complaining of stomach pains, was taken to the hospital, the doctors discovered that she was four months pregnant with twins. The doctors decided on an abortion. Abortion is only permitted in Brazil in case of rape and where the life of the mother is at risk and doctors said the girl’s case met both these conditions. The doctors said the girl was so small that her uterus did not have the ability to contain one child let alone two.

The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going through but the procedure was successfully carried out last Wednesday.

Now a Catholic Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped this nine-year-old child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. These include all the doctors, the nurses and the child’s mother. It will not apply to the girl herself because she is so young.

Archbishop Jose Sobrinho says that the law of God is above any human law.

Somewhat belatedly Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal is returning his Order of Canada to protest Henry Morgantaler’s being named to the order.

At the same time Turcotte is asking Canadians to seriously consider the issue of abortion before they vote in the Oct. 14 federal election. Turcotte says he doesn’t support any particular party and cannot tell politicians what to do or what to think. But he pleaded for a a serious and profound debate on abortion:

“This issue is not settled definitely and the debate that this decision [honouring Morgrentaler] has sparked shows that there is not a consensus on abortion in Canada.”

Quebec City’s Cardinal Marc Ouellet also said that Canadians should not hail Morgentaler as a hero:

“What he stands for deeply offends and infuriates many people. So, I think, there’s a limit and we have to protest and voice our opposition..”

The Quebec Federation of Women quickly denounced the attempt to reopen the abortion debate during the election campaign:

“We have never seen so many threats to abortion rights and women’s autonomy since the legalization of abortion in 1988,” said federation president Michele Asselin.

Should we have a debate about abortion in the current election campaign?

Canada is one of the only democracies in the western world that has no law whatsoever governing abortions. Should we have one?

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